


Where were you when I was still kind?

by PerryJC



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Juno Steel Needs a Hug, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 13:01:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18152192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerryJC/pseuds/PerryJC
Summary: Juno read somewhere, he thinks, that oftentimes trauma manifests itself later-sometimes much, much later-after the events have unfolded. After everything’s over, when they’re finally safe, their survival instincts switch off, and, well.Juno starts to process his trauma, because I can't get enough of that shit and I am ~projecting~.





	Where were you when I was still kind?

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings. Nothing too graphic, just Juno being startled by loud noises, flashing back to stuff that went down with his mom and Ben, etc. etc. 
> 
> Also Peter's alias is Snow in this, so no one is confused. 
> 
> Title from Master & A Hound by Gregory Alan Isakov

It’s been a long time since Juno has felt this way. He’d been living in the same shitty apartment for years, since before everything went down with the HCPD. And moving into that place, well…he hadn’t had much room for sentimentality. But now, as he lay on his bed in a tiny room on Buddy’s ship, he feels…sad? Maybe just nostalgic, he isn’t sure, but he remembers this feeling from his childhood, when they’d moved into their apartment in Oldtown. The walls are bare and the room is cold and unfamiliar. Nothing’s wrong per say…he hadn’t understood back then why moving to Oldtown was bad, and here and now he’s excited about the future. But still a sense of loss pervades him; the simple knowledge that there are things, places, people he might never see again just….

He takes a deep breath, willing the lump in his throat to dissolve. He’s a different person now, a new woman. What he left behind shouldn’t matter. It _doesn’t_ matter.

He’s not sure how long he’s been staring at the ceiling, but the auto-timed lights have dimmed by the time he hears a soft knock on his door.

He jumps despite himself, takes a few moments to slow his heart. Before he has a chance to call out, tell Rita she can come in, he hears a soft voice.

“Juno?”

He freezes. It’s not Rita. It’s….that voice he’s dreamed of hearing again for so long, a voice he’s not sure he deserves to hear. It’s _him_.

His mouth opens, closes, and opens again. He’s not sure what to say and so, well…he says nothing. He waits, and waits, until he hears the soft pad of footsteps walking away from his door.

He flops down on the bed, rolls over and shuts his eyes tight.

 _You always were a fucking coward, Steel_ , he thinks. Curls in on himself.

_Just a little monster._

_________________

 

Juno read somewhere, he thinks, that oftentimes trauma manifests itself later-sometimes much, much later-after the events have unfolded, completed. After everything’s over, when they’re finally safe, the victims' survival instincts switch off, and, well.

He’d had a case once, saved this girl from a local sex-trafficking ring. He’d gone into this house and gotten her out, and she’d been great the whole time, honestly better than he’d expected. She even saved _him_ once, hit a guy over the head with a pipe that would’ve stabbed Juno if the girl hadn’t acted.

Later in his office, waiting for her dad to come and get her, the girl was in the midst of talking animatedly with Rita when she just…stopped. She stopped right in the middle of a sentence and _lost it_.

He’s thinking about this now, about what he’d read. Actually, he may not have read it at all. He hadn’t, had he? Rita had told him that, about trauma, though at the time he wasn’t sure why. Thought it was just one of her random tangents, something that came up in the plot of one of her streams. But maybe, maybe she knew. Even then. Juno wouldn’t be surprised; Rita had always been smarter than him.

It’s the first morning on the ship, of course it is, that Juno starts to think something might be a little… off, with him. Well, things have always been _really off_ , but this feels different somehow. And he doesn’t like it _at all_.

“Gooooood morning Mistah Steel!” Rita bounces up to him while he pours himself a cup of coffee.

“Rita,” he mutters, or thinks he does. He’s still half-asleep.

“So what do you think we’re gonna do first Mistah Steel?? Oh! Do you think we’ll rob a bank, or NO! Maybe an old rich lady on Venus with _diamond jewelry_ , just like that time on Venusian Parlors when…”

Juno half-listens while he drinks his coffee, watches Rita while she fills half her cup with sugar, until he’s suddenly more alert than he’s felt in years. The door to the kitchen swings open and Peter Nureyev walks through it. No…not walks. Sashay is a better word for it. His hips swing back and forth as he languidly approaches the coffeemaker, stopping right next to Juno. He’s close enough that Juno can tell he’s emanating heat. Peter had always been warm to the touch, at least it seemed that way to Juno, who was perpetually cold, always complaining to Rita about the thermostat in the office, the office he probably would never see again.

Juno can’t take his eyes off him.

Get it together Steel, he thinks, shaking his head and looking back at his coffee, trying in vain to pay more attention to whatever Rita’s saying, but-

“Good morning, Detective.”

Juno chokes on his coffee and…oh my god, did he squeak just now? Nureyev’s smirk confirms that yes, he probably did, and his cheeks flame up in embarrassment. He coughs a little and opens his mouth to respond-though he has no idea, none at all, what to say. He’s settled on a neutral grunt of acknowledgment when several things happen at once.

The door to the kitchen opens again, but this time with much more force. The bang of the doorknob hitting the wall echoes through the room and Juno drops his mug, shattering it on the metal floor. Buddy and Vespa walk in, hand-in-hand, and move to sit at the table across the room.

All of this happens in the space of a second, maybe two, and when Juno becomes aware, he’s not where he was a moment ago. He’s moved so that he’s standing in front of Rita, hand on his hip even though his blaster’s back in his room. Buddy and Vespa are too wrapped up in one another to notice what their entrance had brought on, but they had to have, the mug….Maybe they are too kind, trying to spare Juno some embarrassment, he thinks. He glances over his shoulder and Rita is looking up at him, a question in her eyes, Juno can almost hear _You okay, Boss?_ She’s seen this before. But Peter….

Juno looks up at Nureyev, whose eyes are probably wider than his own, and shocked, confused. Juno, more embarrassed than before, feels his cheeks heat up and clears his throat, though his next words come out hoarse.

“Sorry,” he says. “I...”

He trails off, hand scratching behind his neck, and opts for action over words. He grabs a towel and starts to bend down to clean the mess he’s made, but his hands are shaky and not working as well as he wants them to. He reaches for a piece of glass but before he can grab it he hears Rita start up again.

“I’ve got this, Mistah Steel, here, why don’t you take this cup-“ Rita hands him her own cup of coffee, they’ve shared before, it didn’t bother Juno-“and go start that stream I’ve been telling you to watch! The one about werewolves, and I’ll be there in a minute with snacks! Ok?”

Juno stands and blinks down at her, and she touches his arm. For some reason it doesn’t make him flinch, and he finds himself nodding and leaving the room.

Nureyev’s eyes burn into his back the entire way.

_________ 

 

 

After that morning things don’t get better. Juno always feels on the verge of shaken, like he’s just hopping from one moment to the next. There’s no time to sit or breathe or think about….well, everything, anything. Ramses, Jack, Sarah, Ben. God, there’s was just so much, it was _too much, too much too much_

“Juno, did you hear what I said?”

Juno blinks out of his reverie and looks around the table at his shipmates. Rita is distracted, Vespa looks annoyed, Buddy…well, he can’t read Buddy. But Nureyev and, oddly, Jet are looking his way, and they look...is that concern?

Juno looks back at Buddy. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t catch that last bit.”

For her part, she doesn’t look annoyed. “That’s fine,” she says. “I was saying that for this particular job, I’m going to need you to….”

 

And that’s how Juno finds himself here. Perched at the edge of a bar, next to Peter fucking Nureyev of all people. Well, realistically he knows it was either Nureyev or one of the four other people on the ship, so maybe the odds weren’t as astronomical as they felt. Still.

They’d managed to avoid talking thus far, or at least Juno had been avoiding it. _Coward_ , whispers a voice in his head again, but he stuffs it down, sipping on his glass of Saurian brandy and searching the crowd for their mark.

“Over there,” he hears Nureyev say next to him, echoed in the comms in his ear. Juno’s eyes follow Nureyev’s line of sight until he catches a glimpse of them. Mx. Baranash, the wealthy owner of, well…. A lot. But specifically, a collection of high-end art, one piece of which would be theirs by the end of the night if all went to plan.

“I see them,” Juno murmurs back, a bit annoyed he hadn’t caught them first. In his defense, he was _really_ uncomfortable; his dress was too revealing for his taste, and the hug of the fabric meant he hadn’t been able to conceal a blaster underneath. He felt naked, in every sense of the word.

“Well then, my dear detective,” Nureyev turns to Juno with a literal twinkle in his eye, how does he even do that?

Nureyev turns from Juno and in seemingly no time at all, catches Baranash’s eye and somehow beckons them. They make their way across the crowded hotel ballroom toward Juno and Nureyev, settling their arm on the bar next to Juno.

“Mx. Baranash,” Nureyev purrs, and Juno is decidedly not jealous.

“My,” Baranash’s voice is deep and warm. “What a lovely lady you have,” they say, looking Juno up and down.

“Quite,” Nureyev’s hand on Juno’s shoulder is solid, comforting. “My wife and I noticed you. We’re here for the auction, and couldn’t help wondering, well…” he trails off suggestively, and the conversation that follows Juno can’t really make sense of. He’d never had trouble getting….well, sex. But this was different. Nureyev turns it into a goddam art form, and Juno does not need to think about that for a couple of reasons. Before he knows it, the three of them are riding the elevator to one of the top floors, where Baranash rents a penthouse suite.

“…so the family’s out of town,” they were saying to Peter as Juno tunes back in, flashing what he hopes is a flirty smile Baranash’s way, trying to pull his weight in this operation. The elevator chimes and opens onto a room the size of a whole block of Oldtown. Juno tries to keep the awe off his face, not wanting to blow their cover as….trillionaires, or whatever they are supposed to be, but it’s hard. Is that painting actually made of old money?? Right next to…

There. That’s what they’re here for. The painting is small, but Buddy had a buyer lined up that was willing to pay well over 30 million creds for it. Juno risks a glance at Peter, but his eyes are still on Baranash. The three walk further into the home, Baranash giving them a succinct tour, probably eager to move on to…other activities.

Peter is nodding along politely, and Juno starts running over the details of their plan again in his head. It’s his first heist with the team, and even though he would never say it, he desperately wants to succeed. He needs a win, honestly, and he likes to think he would have had it if it weren’t for what happened next.

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” Baranash says as he kicks the toy to the side. “I told the kids to pick up before they left, that’s just how it is with children sometimes, they were just…”

But Juno can’t hear any of it. He stares at the toy, rooted to the spot, the noise it had made when Baranash stepped on it playing on repeat in his head.

_Have no fear, Turbo’s here!_

Peter’s hand slips from his grip as he continues following Baranash down the hall and Juno remains standing stock still. He can hear Jet in his ear-

_Have no fear, Turbo’s here!_

“…Snow, you need to get him out…compromised…”

_Have no fear, Turbo’s here!_

-and sees Nureyev turn to look back at him, head bent as he listens to whatever Jet is saying that Juno only catches bits of. When Nureyev’s eyes snap to Juno’s face, Juno flinches at the blatant concern he sees there, the fear.

Peter looks so confused and frightened, and Juno hates himself for putting that look there. The look is soon gone, however, replaced by a mask of calm and determination. He strides back to Juno, but Juno stumbles back, away from him. Nureyev raises his hands, placating.

“Just a moment, Juno,” and Peter turns back to Baranash, who is loudly questioning the events of the past thirty seconds and who Peter promptly stuns with the blaster that had fit nicely under his looser ensemble, before turning back to Juno.

Juno, who is rapidly losing the ability to breathe. He shakes his head and tries to speak, but something like a choked sob forces its way out instead. Peter looks pained, and reaches out a hand, but Juno shakes his head harder and the hand falls back to his side.

Juno can hear someone else talking, and frantically looks around for the source of the noise before he realizes it’s coming from him.

 _It’s a fact_ , he can hear himself whispering, over and over, but he can’t stop. _It’s a fact, It’s a fact, I can count on…._

Juno sinks to his knees and Peter follows.

“Juno, I need you to listen to me.”

Juno doesn’t respond, just rubs his palms into his eyes, breathing short and shallow and is he crying?

“Juno, _please_ , listen. Just try and do what I do, listen to the way I breathe, in….”

Slowly, slowly, Juno comes back to himself.

At some point he must have let him closer, because his head is resting on Peter’s shoulder and Peter’s arms are holding him tightly. He’s whispering Juno’s name, interspersed with a litany of words Juno doesn’t recognize, all of which are calming him, grounding him to the present.

The here and now, in which he is where he’d wanted to be ever since he’d walked out of that hotel room in the middle of the night, where he never thought he’d be again.

“Peter,” he croaks out.

Peter starts a little, and pulls back to look at Juno. Juno looks back at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Juno, you have nothing to apologize for, it’s perfectly-“

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and Peter’s eyes widen, understanding that this apology is for more than Juno’s outburst, maybe for more than leaving him that night.

His eyes soften, and he doesn’t look angry, like Juno thinks he probably should. He just looks sad, and sad _for Juno_.

“Juno,” he whispers, softer than Juno has ever heard his name said before, and kisses him.

_________

 

Juno paces angrily, shouting and waving his hands in the air. God, he has so much pent-up nervous energy, and even now, with Nureyev safe and back on the ship, he can’t stop moving, he can’t stop…

“We should have bought off the guards, I said that, I fucking said that from the get-go, and if we had bought that trackable nail polish I pointed out when we were on Europa it would have been no problem to find him as soon as he was gone, we would have—”

“Juno,” Buddy cuts him off sharply. “I understand that you’re upset, but really this couldn’t have gone better if we’d planned it ourselves. Part of the job is reacting to unforeseen circumstances, and in this case Snow did exactly what we trained—”

“But it _wasn’t_ unforeseen!” Juno shouts, and everyone turns to look at him. They are crowded in the small ship’s kitchen, Nureyev seated on the counter while Rita applies some sort of healing ointment to the blaster wound on his thigh. “I foresaw, dammit! When you sent him in, I _said_ he wasn’t right for the job, for the part, and look what happened, Snow got _fucking kidnapped_ —"

“I know,” Buddy sighed. “It should have been you, but Snow is….”

This time, part of Juno is distantly aware of what is happening. _Shit, Goddammit, not again_ , some part of him thinks, but the whole rest of him is screaming something else.

_“I thought he was you.”_

Juno recognizes Buddy has finished her piece and is waiting on a reply, but he has none to give. His mouth opens and closes, _I must look like a fish_ , he thinks. Then his eyes land on Nureyev and Rita, their own eyes openly concerned and knowing. Rita steps toward him but before she can say anything, Juno spins on his heels and leaves the kitchen.

He barely makes it to his bathroom before losing whatever he’d eaten, whenever he’d last eaten, he honestly can’t remember. He hears the door to his room slide open, and wipes a hand across his forehead.  


“Rita, can we do this later, I really-“

“Though I appreciate the compliment, Juno,” Peter starts, and Juno looks up in surprise. “I am, tragically, not your brilliant secretary-slash-best friend.”

Juno smirks a little at that, before the smile drops from his face and he squeezes his eyes shut against the fresh onslaught of memories. Memories he thought he’d fucking buried a long time ago, if that fucking cyber-eye hadn’t fucked up his head, _god_ ….

“Juno.”

Juno opens his eyes again, back against the tub, and looks into Peter’s. Peter, who is crouched before him, staring openly at him with such tender concern… It makes him _sick_. He doesn’t _deserve it_.

 _But no_ , he thinks. _I’m supposed to be better. I_ want _to be better_.

And so he takes a breath.

“It was supposed to be me,” he says.

Peter shakes his head. “It wasn’t your fault, Juno, like Buddy said, I am the master thief after all. I have more experience, it made more sense to-“

“No,” Juno raises his head again, cutting Peter off. “No, I mean, um….my mom.” He swallows and looks back at Peter, whose eyes slowly widen in horror, in dawning realization.

“She, uh,” Juno coughs, chuckles humorlessly. “She said that, to me, when I, uh. When I found…” He stops to take a breath, he has to get this out, Peter should know.

“ _She killed Ben because she thought he was me_.”

His voice cracks as the last word turns into a sob, and he hears Peter gasp.

“Can I touch you, Juno?”

Juno nods his head yes, and Peter pulls him forward, crushes him tightly to his chest.

“God, Juno, I am…” Juno feels Peter swallow back his own emotion. “I am so, _so_ sorry.”

Juno laughs again, though it quickly dissolves into crying against Peter’s shoulder. God, he thinks, he’s a mess. _Get it together, Steel_ , _or he’ll leave you, just like everybody else_.

He must have said that out-loud though, because Peter’s next words, whispered against his hair, were exactly what he hadn’t known until then that he needed to hear.

“ _I’m not going anywhere_.”


End file.
